


The stars are not wanted now

by dollsome



Category: Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-07
Updated: 2011-08-07
Packaged: 2017-10-22 09:00:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/236355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dollsome/pseuds/dollsome
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anne, Gilbert, and loss. Set during Anne's House of Dreams.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The stars are not wanted now

They don't speak to one another. Not for -- no, she doesn't know exactly how long. Time's turned strange. She has trouble noticing it. She stays in bed and looks out the window. A tiny square of outside world, beyond her House of Dreams. It should be more interesting, she thinks dimly. The sky, the trees, the distant hint of sea. They should mean something.

Gilbert is often by her side, of course. He and Marilla take turns in this vigil at her bedside. With Marilla, it's easy to cry, at least. Marilla is the first person she ever cried to. It comes as naturally as breathing. She tries to find the words for this feeling, because she thinks sometimes that words are best with Marilla, who isn't so very good with the sweeping intangibles of things. She has always done this. Stumbled and traipsed through words until she finds the right ones, the ones that will make Marilla understand. There is an awful part of her that wants to believe Marilla _can't_ understand, will never understand. Marilla who was never a mother. But this is a lie and Anne knows that. The sorrow on Marilla's face says that her heart breaks for the baby, but the true tragedy would have been Anne dying with her. Marilla is not quite ruined yet.

 _I wish I were dead,_ Anne sobs sometimes against Marilla's shoulder. (Do the words come out or does she only think them?) _I wish I had gone too, and then I wouldn't have to feel this way._

But she is careful not to dream up heavens.

Gilbert sleeps in the chair by the bed. His bones must be in agony, must feel like an old man's bones. But she cannot quite bring herself to reprieve him back into bed. She wants his arms around her and she wants never to touch him again. She thinks how happy she was, nights and mornings right here, his kisses and his hands and his laughter, sweetly familiar and wonderfully new. How like a silly perfect miracle it all seemed.

One morning -- she knows it's morning because the room has turned bright, starkly bright -- she wakes up to find him looking at her. She hasn't looked at him enough, she realizes with a start. And she used to be so good at it. The sight of him now -- his handsome face so sad and hollow, unshaven and full of shadows.

Still, he smiles just a bit (oh, his sad, dear mouth) when he sees that she's awake.

She wants to close her eyes again. The sunlight is so unsympathetic. She can't see how she and it will ever reconcile.

But there is her husband. Her husband and his sad ugly grief. It is not like Marilla's, brittle with love, a promise murmured into her temple that the pain will fade. Gilbert's face tells the truer story. It is not a thing that will mend with time.

She holds her hand out for his. He gets up slowly to take it. She tugs him down onto the bed beside her. She releases his hand and they do not quite touch.

"When I was young," she finds herself confiding to the very white ceiling, "I was so sure my hair would be my lifelong sorrow."

To her surprise, she laughs a little. It's a horrendous sound, exactly the wrong sound for this room full of pristine death, but it makes her feel better. He laughs too, a hoarse laugh like a cough. He reaches over with his cherished fingers, and loops one of them fondly through her red hair.


End file.
